I’d like to share our outing from earlier today with you. It was a fascinating venue. In a recent search for interesting things to do locally, I stumbled upon a gem I’d never even heard of: Nathan Manilow Sculpture Garden at Governors State University, a mere 25 minutes from home. Apparently, it has been been named “Best Sculpture Park in the Nation” in USA Today’s 10 Best Readers’ Choice Awards. Who knew? Certainly not me.
Anyway, a visit has been on a to go to list for a long time - probably a couple years. You might be aware that our last two years have been rather… um… busy. Little wonder we’d never gone! But the time had come. We’re both healthy enough, it’s outdoors (so no COVID-19 concerns) and the weather was nothing less than PERFECTO today. So we set out on an adventure, knowing only tidbits about what we’d be encountering. The place boasts as many as 30 large-scale sculptures over 100 acres! Needless to say, we didn’t imagine we’d see them all in one fell swoop - that’s a lot of territory to cover! The goal was to get the lay of the land and see what we could. We passed a few as we entered the lovely campus but it took a few minutes to get our bearings and find a place to park that was close to - hopefully - a well-populated clump of sculptures to explore. We could see two from the car and a parking lot at one point, so we stopped there. Bingo! The Mother Lode!
I downloaded a very handy app that notified us when we were in the vicinity of a sculpture. It identified its title and most had an audio recording, (many recorded by the artists themselves) explaining the piece and their experience of creating and installing it.
Our first encounter was with Illinois Landscape No. 5. It is HUGE! It’s 134’ long - by the time I could get far enough away to get it all in, my photos seemed not to appreciate its massive size. Here’s Scott with it to show scale:
(I’ll add the photo of the accompanying plaques for sculpture details in the gallery, FYI.)
Once we walked over the hill on which this sculpture sprawls, we could see another, but on the way, we passed a pond with some benches overlooking it (and another sculpture across the way). We stopped for a short rest to appreciate the view. We didn’t get over to the other side of the pond and I can’t find any information identifying that particular sculpture. Hopefully we’ll get over there on a subsequent visit - I’m pretty sure we’ll return from time to time. We made the right call going on a Sunday. No other visitors were around and we didn’t even see students. If we hadn’t known we were on a campus, we’d never have guessed.
Not far from this location, we located the next piece, entitled, Oscar’s Inclination:
After enjoying the comfort of another bench while gazing at this one, we listened to the artist relay the story of creating this piece and how it was installed here in the middle of a huge snowstorm.
From this vantage point, we could glimpse the next sculpture we’d encounter, just across the water: Falling Meteor.
Back on the winding paved path toward the next installment, we noticed seed pods had fallen from trees - ahh, a sign of autumn. Sadly, the trees haven’t made their dramatic color changes yet - I was really hoping I’d get to experience that along with the sculptures today. Maybe another year…
We again listened to the recording about the experience of creating this massive work of art. Why is it all yellow? The artist says that when he built it, he had only enough money for one color paint!
The path turned to grass and wound again up a small rise to reveal the next work of art: Phoenix.
Straight ahead of this view (obscured by the “V” shape) is yet another sculpture down a grassy path: Flying Saucer. If you see the black saucer-shape at the end of the grassy strip, you’ve found it! We didn’t go down there, though, as we were wandering pretty far from home base, a.k.a. the parking lot.
Back down the grassy path we strolled, bidding a farewell to Falling Meteor as we retraced our steps. As we passed by Oscar’s Inclination, something on the other side of the path caught Scott’s eye. Was that another sculpture? Upon further inspection, indeed it was! Lanleff - Demure No. 4 was its name. Markedly different from the others we’d seen today, this was made of bronze. Situated directly outside a building which was casting its shadow upon the piece, I’m afraid my photo doesn’t do justice to the intricate detail in this sculpture. If you look on the right of the piece itself, in about about halfway down the photo, you can see Falling Meteor’s location in relation to it.
Having been slightly detoured by a surprise sculpture, we retired to a bench again to regard the pond and the glorious autumn day. I took a video of our mid-afternoon minutes on the bench, but I can’t upload it here. Those who follow me on Facebook or Twitter can catch it there if you’re interested.
So that was our special outing, Fall 2021 style. Seven sculptures (two from a distance) and my new knees did fine, just fine, on grades and curbs (up and down), pavement, grass… What a difference a year (and two surgeries) makes! This day was worth the wait!
Additional photos from today at the Sculpture Garden…
Thanks for following along on our autumn outing. I hope you enjoyed it! You can receive my essays to your inbox by signing up for free to receive my email newsletter.
I’d love to hear what you thought of this piece! Please leave me a comment!
What a glorious day for your outing! It’s interesting that “Things to Do” can be right under our noses, yet we’re either unaware or never get around to exploring them. I can relate to that so well. Glad you both got some Vitamin D and that your new knees worked well. Here’s hoping you get to enjoy some Fall color soon!